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MENTAL BALANCE
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give us relief from griefs and miseries? The spiritual practitioner is a destitute. He owns no property and wealth. He does not exercise any authority and commands no power. Does he not talk with his tongue in his mouth ?
These questions are raised by those who believe that only material objects are capable of giving us happiness. Spiritualists, however, fail to understand the correctness of this view. According to them material objects may cure patients of their diseases, but how can they give us happiness? For example, when one feels hungry, he eats some thing and his hunger is pacified. But does eating give him happiness? Perhaps not. Throughout our lives we go on eating some thing or the other to pacify hunger. But we confuse the pacifying of hunger with happiness. Eating some thing simply cures us of the disease of hunger.
When the mind of an addict to intoxicants becomes restless, he drinks and forgets his restlessness for the time-being. But do drinks give him happiness? Till intoxication lasts, he remains unaware of the pain in his intestines. Once the effect of intoxication has subsided, he again feels the pain and again drinks. What he really gets is temporary relief from pain which is not happiness.
Spiritualists have defined happiness as a process which ends in joy. That which gives relief for the time-being, but the consequences of which are painful, cannot be said to be capable of giving joy. Joy is a continuous process which has no end. In other words that which gives us freedom from pain and the consequences of which are also joyous is called happiness.
Soldiers when they win a battle, feel happy. Does their victory result in happiness ? On the other hand, it results in all kinds of griefs and sorrows. These griefs and sorrows are shared by the victors as well as by the vanquished. The devastation caused by wars lasts for years and years together. The effects of wars are the most unhappy. That which results in pain cannot give happiness. Let us try to understand this in the light of whether self-exertion is a source of joy.
Tensions produce miseries and excitements. To be tense means to be impulsive and vice versa. Tension saps energy.
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